


From Nowhere

by OrdinaryRealities



Series: BT Tower Telephone Group B [5]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Agender Aziraphale (Good Omens), Femme presenting Aziraphale, Gen, Genderfluid Crowley, Hanukkah, Holidays, Jewish Ineffable husbands, Jewish Pepper, Post-Canon, femme presenting Crowley, friendship fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:01:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26663359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrdinaryRealities/pseuds/OrdinaryRealities
Summary: A very small Hanukkah party is thrown.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Warlock Dowling, Crowley & Warlock Dowling, Warlock Dowling & Pepper (Good Omens)
Series: BT Tower Telephone Group B [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937806
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25





	From Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [coming home to us](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26649805) by [5ftjewishcactus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/5ftjewishcactus/pseuds/5ftjewishcactus). 



> You should definitely read the whole series (I'm excited to see how it all goes together) but if you don't, the idea is that I got a half-redacted copy of the story before this one and then wrote something inspired by that. 
> 
> I'm very attached to my Jewish Ineffable husbands headcanon, so as soon as I saw a holiday I knew I wanted to write about Hanukkah. (It's not my favorite Jewish holiday, but I didn't want to remove us from the time of year altogether.) 
> 
> I do come from a Jewish family, but we're mostly non-practicing and I'm not Jewish myself, so if I've said anything anti-Semetic in this story, it was not my intention. As always, if I've said anything in the story that is ignorant about any minority, it comes from a place of ignorance, not malice, so please let me know so I can do better next time.
> 
> A quick note about pronouns: Warlock uses she/her for Aziraphale and Crowley when they're female-presenting but Aziraphale still calls Crowley "my dear boy". In my head, this speaks to 6000 years of not really understanding or caring about gender on the part of Aziraphale, and I further justify it with the fact that God uses he/him to describe Crowley even when Crowley is female-presenting. 
> 
> Title is from "The Given Note" by Seamus Heaney, from this lovely stanza: "Still he maintains, from nowhere. / It comes off the bow gravely, / Rephrases itself into the air."

Warlock resettled the box of candles on the counter again and turned around to find that Pip was already checking the contents of the warming drawer one more time. 

The pair shared a sheepish smile and Warlock offered a feeble, “Yeah, I know. I just want things to be…” Nice wasn’t emphatic enough. Perfect might be too much.

Pip nodded. “No, I get it. They’re… You want to do something for them. Adam’s like that too, sometimes.” 

When Warlock first moved back to the UK, he’d been charmed at the thought that he would be living with someone so British that her name was Pip. The novelty hadn’t worn off for months. Even the fact that literally every one of her old friends called her Pepper instead wasn’t enough to curb his delight.

Pip ambled into the front room again and Warlock followed her to find that instead of picking up her book she was straightening ornaments on the tree and the few gifts under it. 

Pip looked up and shrugged. “I know you said they’re Jewish, but…” Warlock could recognize by now when his roommate was admitting to something she thought was embarrassing. 

Before either of them could break the quiet, there was a buzz from the intercom. 

Warlock grinned at Pip and trotted for the door. 

Warlock was never sure if he’d known what he was doing when he walked into that bookstore that day. He had yet to work up the courage to ask them if they’d ever brought him there as a child. Ever talked about the used bookstore in Soho where it could catch in an impressionable boy’s imagination.

Pip’s friend Brian had been out with Warlock that day, but they’d let Warlock take the lead as the pair of them meandered through London. There’d been a Bible in the window. One of those old ornate things, with a sign next to it proclaiming that it was the infamous “Adulterous Bible”. Warlock knew that his familiarity with that, at least, had been a product of his time with them. It had been what drew him to the window, but what drew him inside was a copy of _The Voices of Morebeth_ , just visible. (What did one get an accountant for his birthday? An accountant who was a friend of his roommate, who he’d only met half-a-dozen times, if that. A book about the finances of a small country parish during England’s reformation, of course.) His knowledge of that book had nothing to do with them. Coincidence. Unless he’d ventured into Soho on the hunt for bookshops under their– Or if he’d recognized that corner, turned it because he remembered– maybe Nanny had brought him… It was impossible to say.

Warlock paused just inside the door to try and get his smile under control. However they’d returned to his life, he was grateful. 

On the other side of the door when he opened it stood Aziraphale and Crowley. Tonight, Crowley (Nanny) wore a scarf over her head. Aziraphale wore a dress. (It didn’t make sense to call her Brother Francis even in his head tonight.) She stepped forward first.

“Warlock, my dear boy. Let me look at you.” She wrapped him in a warm hug before stepping back and adjusting her glasses nervously. 

Warlock felt his heart swell at the familiar gesture. “Come up,” he touched her forearm. The sleeve of the dress was heavily embroidered. It looked… vintage was the wrong word. Vintage suggested the 1960’s. Maybe the 1890’s if you really stretched it. This looked like Aziraphale’s… great-great-great-great grandmother might have done the embroidery herself in the mid-1600’s. 

“Pip’s cooked. She’s got her mum’s cookbook out and she’s made… Latkes, and some dessert I can’t begin to pronounce. I mean, I did, several times, but Pip says I’m still murdering the pronunciation so I’m not allowed to say it in front of anyone else until I improve.”

Aziraphale’s nervousness made Warlock’s own nerves vanish as he led the way up the stairs. 

Nanny spoke behind him. “We aren’t anyone else.”

Warlock could feel his face making the same dopey grin again. “You’re going to laugh. If you even understand what I’m saying. Suf-an- umm…”

“Sufganiyot.” Nanny’s pronunciation was confident. 

Warlock winced. “Yes. Pip’s tutoring me, but I’m a slow study. Sufgan-ot?”

Aziraphale’s laugh was less nervous now. Warlock swung the door open to reveal Pip, a beaming smile on her face as well. 

“Welcome, come in! I’m so glad you agreed to come, I wrote my grandmother and she sent me my father’s menorah, but I– the candle box has prayers on it I think, and I can’t read…”

Nanny swept her back into the other room. As Warlock hung her jacket and Aziraphale’s shawl he could hear the murmuring conversation. 

“Do you remember… Jerusalem… the smell of that oil…”

And then Aziraphale’s retort, loud and indignant, “My dear boy… absurd… Surely not…”

Warlock smiled into the depths of the coat closet. In a few moments he would join them in the kitchen. They would turn off the lights so that their faces were illuminated only by the glow of the Christmas tree in the other room and the shammas that Nanny had just lit and they would chant the baruchas and some strange muscle memory would ignite in Warlock and his mouth would follow their voices before he even remembered the nights sneaking out to the gardener’s cottage to stare at the flames. For now, he listened to their voices and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! Please check out the other fics in the series, my fellow group members are lovely and there can never be too much Warlock fluff in the world. 
> 
> ( _Voices of Morebeth_ is a real book about the finances of an English country parish during the reformation and if you enjoy finance, sheep, or discussion of clothing/fabric/vestments it's absolutely worth a read. I was not expecting to be as entertained as I was by it.)
> 
> You can follow me at writingordinaryrealities on tumblr or on Twitter (where I have so far made a grand total of *checks* ZERO posts) at... it's OrdinaryRealities or @naryreal2, I'm not sure which one you search for there. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!!!


End file.
